SEGA, Bungie Among Many Studios Considered for Acquisition by Microsoft to Bolster Game Pass and Mobile Efforts

Also do like Ubisoft. Personally, I’d say Microsoft should invest say 15-25% stake in them and then sign them for like a 10-year contract to work on Xbox IPs. That Star Wars Outlaws looked very impressive just pictured a third person Halo game like that. Ubisoft game engines are also pretty nice. certainly those 20000 plus devs could work on exclusive IPs from Sega or even ABK.

i think the list is from 2019 that time ubisoft wasnt doing that bad they had a market cap of aroun 8-10 billion so i also dont think microsoft was considering acquiring anyone more than 5billion market cap it was after bethesda things changed for them so yeah i m sure now list would be very different compared to the list we have seen here is the ubisoft market cap so i think they werent on table at that time

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nah its either acquire whole of them or dont to this shit cuz they aint working on ABK or sega IPs with something like that

I don’t think Ubisoft, EA or T2 were on the consideration list which makes me think they had no intention of going for any of them but might want to partner with them for Game Pass. Ubisoft will set alarm bells so I doubt they would be interested in a play for it. Sega, Bethesda, XGS and ABK together dwarf Ubisoft in developer staff. Certainly, Ubisoft could do something like work for hire until their business becomes stable.

Ubisoft is a good target, but could be a complicated acquisition on many levels. The list of studios being considered shows us that Microsoft is targeting a wide variety of studios and content. They may prefer to be selective and acquire a series of quality independent studios that will probably be easier to manage and bring much more creativity to the Xbox universe. There are still big studios that can be acquired that would be big wins for Xbox. So even though SEGA would be the last big publisher to join the family, I think they can still hit hard with the studios in the years to come.

basically MS want studios that they don’t have to Micromanage everytime and can handle themselves but can complete their milestones that have been set and have a studio culture that just needs a bit of help

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Come on ubisoft is still big even if u don’t like their games ND they ain’t that big anymore as they used to market cap much lesser than sega n capcom

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COO of Sega Sammy Shuji Utsumi, says that they aren’t interested in joining another company (acquisition) at this time. “We will do it as our own company, the position of management is to operate as SEGA Sammy” On the possibility of becoming a subsidiary of another company, he replied “No, not now."

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Love SEGA to go to XBox.

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MS buying Sega would only be worth it if the games were exclusive. Otherwise you’re better off buying a 30-ish % stake in Sega and at least getting marketing and Game Pass day 1 for all future Sega games

And why not just own them outright?

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Or they could own them, get everything on GP permanently, have all marketing and still make all the money all their games make instead

With this logic they shouldn’t have bought ABK either, owning is always better than renting

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Honestly I agree with the sentiment that if they acquire Sega they should be exclusive. Then really lean into the Sega branding for the next console and maybe just maybe they could be somewhat successful in Japan like they were with the MSX back in the day.

I see Sega as a somewhat similar situation as Bethesda. Sure they may get hate for it but, they’re going to get hate regardless.

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I think they need to move away from exclusivity if they want to continue to get approvals to buy publishers.

I think the ideal case is a mix, where some exclusives incentivize joining the ecosystem for folks who aren’t interested in Game Pass.

Either way, I don’t care as long as the games are 1. Coming to Xbox and 2. Coming to Game Pass Day 1.

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All of this is pretty much my thinking too, I’m not against them making things exclusive but if it’s a case of SEGA only comes if everything stays multiplat, then i’m more than fine with that

MS might also be looking at mutliplats not really mattering if they can get GP to a certain size, where it’s much more mainstream

Maybe they don’t care about those games being multiplat if GP becomes well enough known that people start associating all those games with Xbox anyway and just go “i’ll play it on GP” than PS or Nintendo

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Whats the point?

“lets spend billions on buying out a publisher but also to help out competitors too by supporting their platform”

A multiplatform acquisition, you might as well make all of your games multiplat

If its a Game Pass move then you accomplish the same thing without buying out the entire company

Logistically speaking what is the point of owning Sega and having them be full multiplat, but then also owning Zenimax and having them be exclusive?

Without exclusivity, buying someone like Sega serves zero purpose

You can accomplish the same thing without buying out Sega, without exclusivity buyingnout Sega serves no purpose that a deal cant accomplish

Well no…because ABK is resulting in a bunch of exclusives for Xbox

Also while were at it, if its purely a Game Pass play then it’d be better to just pay for GP day 1 on a per game basis…i mean does anyone really care about Souls Hackers 2? Paying for the next Yakuza or Persona games is worth it. Sonic Frontiers on Game Pass would have been worth it

You keep coming back to this, but no deal like this exists and we have no idea what it would cost to get it done. If it was as easy as you make it sound, they’d be doing it.

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I’m personally against exclusivity on Sega because the cons are massive. Owning just one Japanese publisher doesn’t save Xbox in Japan so the games that become exclusive would be in trouble there. To add I definitely don’t think they get multiple JP publishers and I think it will be a challenge to get one.

Games like Yakuza have finally blown up after going multiplat, don’t need to see them go exclusive again.

As I mentioned before there’s titles that are just ultra niche like Etrian Odyssey (Atlus) that needs the audience that is on Switch, I think it would stop existing as an Xbox exclusive, it’s not a system seller and the audience would just move to similar games on the Switch so such niche IPs would die off.

Pulling just PlayStation would maybe turn out okay, but I wonder how regulators react to just Sony being singled out.

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Because buying Sega for a Game Pass deal isn’t worth it and you never explained either how Logistically making Sega multiplat while keeping Zenimax exclusive makes any sense

Thankfully MS would never try to go for a terrible deal and if Sega did want to stay multiplat then Phil told them no

I think the main advantage in terms of Game Pass about a SEGA acquisition would be that MS would get to own all the IP’s, and they would be able to put all these franchises on Game Pass forever. They would have to spend less as well in the long term to keep having these titles on Game Pass. There also wouldn’t be the risk of the deal ending at some point.

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